Selling From the Heart Podcast

The episode contains a handful of genuinely useful tactical specifics - the voicemail-then-email sequence with a deliberate subject line, the open-ended follow-up email formula, and the training game structure - but these are surrounded by extended motivational filler about the general importance of conversation, which dilutes the overall density considerably.

“the first step is to leave a voicemail...tell them that you're also going to send an email in case that's easier for them. And as soon as you hang up on that call, send that email with the subject line. Uh, my voicemail earlier today, because that gets through spam filters”

“Where does this, whatever it is fit in with your current priorities? When should we speak again”

The central thesis - phones and real conversations are underused in sales - is one of the most recycled topics in the profession, and the episode does little to reframe it from first principles; the pest-vs-persistence distinction and the training game are modest novelties but not enough to elevate the episode above familiar 'pick up the phone' content.

“a pest is Covid or Ants in the Kitchen. Persistence is loyalty, dedication, organization”

“Our voices holds our enthusiasm. Our voices tell somebody we are real”

Mary Jane Copps is a genuine practitioner with two decades of direct experience training sales teams and running cold-calling projects herself, and she backs claims with her own survey research and live client examples; however she is a mid-tier consultant/trainer rather than a scaled operator or executive, which limits the ceiling here.

“I just finished my 2026 report on uh, real time conversations in the workplace. And there's a big gap between what executives and CEOs believe conversations can do and what's actually happening”

“I'll take on either a huge cold calling project, uh, every year or several small ones because if I was still teaching what I taught 20 years ago, I wouldn't be making any money at all”

The episode delivers several concrete data points and named examples - the dentist client scenario with post-2020 hygienist shortages, the 5-calls/2-meetings anecdote, the 85% reply rate, and 110 dials per day in the 1980s - but all evidence is anecdotal and small-scale, with no named companies, verified studies, or broader market data cited.

“this young woman took that away, uh, from a coaching call on Monday and on Wednesday she said to me that she'd made five calls and two people have booked meetings”

“back in the 80s, building that business, I had days when I dialed the phone 110 times”

The hosts do surface a few useful follow-up threads - pushing on the voicemail myth, asking for the specific game mechanics, and drilling into the empathy concept - but they default to enthusiastic cheerleading ('pure gold right there') rather than genuine challenge, and several minutes are consumed by shout-outs and self-promotion that add no substance.

“I want to zero in on something because it's gonna debunk the myth that, that I have out there about leaving voicemails”

“That is pure gold right there, Mary Jane”